Not long after Audrey Meadows — Alice on TV's "The Honeymooners" — met Newport News' own Randy Rouse, she fired off a telegram to co-star Jackie Gleason, who played her grouchy husband Ralph Kramden on the 1950s blockbuster show:

"Dear Ralph: So sorry, but I'm becoming a bigamist today, marrying Randy Rouse." Or, as Rouse himself put it to his friend Trip Ferguson, he was waterskiing when he spotted her lounging in a bright red Buick convertible and was swept off his feet.

Rouse died April 7, at age 100, still the epitome to his many friends of a certain lightheartedly joyful Tidewater Virginia style: fond of parties, horses, hunting and dogs.

And, true to one Tidewater tradition, unafraid to flout convention, as when claiming it was he who was swept off his feet.

Or when he built the high-rise Rouse Tower at the corner of Mercury Boulevard and Jefferson Avenue a half century ago in what was then a most definitively low-rise Newport News, said John Lawson, president and chief executive officer of W.M. Jordan Co. Rouse took that plunge on land near his landmark King James Motor Hotel, where the Whitehall Club, one of the earliest and most popular bottle clubs in the pre-liquor-by-the-drink days. Later, on the northwest corner of that intersection he built the huge recreational slide attraction many children from the city still remember.

True to another tradition, he was a man of good fortune always ready to — quietly, please — lend a hand to another just starting out.

Take, for instance, what his friends from the 60-year-old "Do Nothing Club" remember.

"Randy's business acumen and his humble lighthearted ways were an encouragement and an example of honesty and integrity to the businessmen and professionals who were either members or guests of the club" said his friend Ward Scull. "Through investments or loans of money to a number people plus his investment of time here, Randy made a difference here."

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Players from the Peninsula District prepare for the upcoming 757 All-Star Game at Woodside High School on Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2017.

Players from the Peninsula District prepare for the upcoming 757 All-Star Game at Woodside High School on Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2017.

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Players from the Peninsula District prepare for the upcoming 757 All-Star Game at Woodside High School on Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2017.

Players from the Peninsula District prepare for the upcoming 757 All-Star Game at Woodside High School on Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2017.

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The Newport News Police Department is seeking assistance in helping to identify a group of males targeting citizens in a gambling scam. This will be a group of 4 to 6 black males operating a green Jeep Commander at various shopping centers throughout the city. The males typically approach citizens and request to play a gambling game, sometimes taking money straight from the victim’s hands. One of the males lures the citizen/victim away from the group, by which time they flee in a green Jeep Commander.

The Newport News Police Department is seeking assistance in helping to identify a group of males targeting citizens in a gambling scam. This will be a group of 4 to 6 black males operating a green Jeep Commander at various shopping centers throughout the city. The males typically approach citizens and request to play a gambling game, sometimes taking money straight from the victim’s hands. One of the males lures the citizen/victim away from the group, by which time they flee in a green Jeep Commander.

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Preview of the Sentara CarePlex Hospital's new Family Maternity Center that will open Dec. 31. The new seven-bed unit has a full range of support rooms for staff and the new babies.

Preview of the Sentara CarePlex Hospital's new Family Maternity Center that will open Dec. 31. The new seven-bed unit has a full range of support rooms for staff and the new babies.

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Phoebus High defeated Menchville 74-60 at Phoebus High on Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2017.

Phoebus High defeated Menchville 74-60 at Phoebus High on Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2017.

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Tsakis family is giving 72 acres of land inland off Beach Road near Grandview to the city of Hampton to be held as conservation.

Tsakis family is giving 72 acres of land inland off Beach Road near Grandview to the city of Hampton to be held as conservation.

Lawson remembered how Rouse once told him, joking about the "RT" at the top of the Rouse Tower, that it was a bad idea to build monuments to yourself.

"He was a true Southern gentleman," Lawson said. "We won't see his like again soon."

Even as he became one of the biggest real estate developers in Northern Virginia, Rouse kept in close touch with Newport News, spending two days a week here through the 1990s, his close friend Tommy Meehan recalls.

"A chance meeting having been introduced by a stranger to an opportunity to build houses for returning veterans in a remote location called Tysons Corner, which mushroomed into lifetime of development, ending as one of the major landowners in Northern Virginia and Tidewater," Meehan said.

"A life full of celebrity encounters and world travels." Meehan added. "A career of friendships with the likes of George Preston Marshall and Jack Kent Cook, along with various connections to the oldest and wealthiest families in Virginia. Quite a life for a small-town boy."

A passionate horseman — for 55 years the joint master of fox hounds of the Fairfax Hunt — Rouse dominated the Virginia steeplechase racing circuit well into his 60s. He was the oldest trainer to run a steeplechase winner when his horse Hishi Soar won at the Foxfield Spring Races last spring.

Still, as he told the Fauquier Times the day before his 100th birthday as he was signing over his Middleburg training track to the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation, "at my age, you have to start thinking about the future."

"When Randy was in his early- to mid-90s, he bought two jet skis from Meehan and me, who were in our 60s," Scull recalled. "Go figure! A man for all seasons."

At his famous Christmas parties, where he hosted everyone from ambassadors to barn hands, Rouse in recent years was fond of toasting "My enemies — they're all dead," his friend Ferguson remembers.

Before all the high-rises and high-priced condos sprouted along Arlington County's Wilson Boulevard, Rouse's multi-acre spread there included a horse barn and swimming pool, framed by concrete lions, into which guests and horses sometimes landed as his parties wound down, Ferguson said.

Rouse, whose family had deep Smithfield roots and grew up in the north end of Newport News, remained active managing businesses owning thousands of acres until his death.

A 1939 graduate of Washington and Lee University, he served as a U.S. Navy officer in World War II, and on several bank and business boards. A former president of the Northern Virginia Home Builders Association and the National Steeplechase Association, he was honored with the F. Ambrose Clark Award for lasting contributions to the sport of steeplechase racing.

He is survived by Michele O'Brien Rouse, his wife of 34 years, and his brother William D. Rouse. He was predeceased by his parents, Parke S. and Pauline Rouse and brothers Dasheill and Parke S. Rouse Jr. Burial will be private, at Ivy Hill in Smithfield.